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Remmer

Vanguard // Unrated // October 26, 2004
List Price: $19.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]

Review by Daniel W. Kelly | posted December 31, 2004 | E-mail the Author
The Movie:
Remmer may sound like the name of a gay porn about a particular oral activity (at least, that's what first came to my mind), but it's actually supposed to be the title of a horror movie about narcoleptics.

The Story:
Addie is on a camping trip with her boyfriend Sonny, and begs him for a ghost story in exchange for sex. He begins to recount a frightening true story of his time in a sleep clinic nearby—about a patient who was deprived of sleep and eventually went after everyone with an axe. Next thing Addie knows, Sonny has passed out, and two male staff members from the clinic are dragging he and she to the clinic, where experiments are being done to rid humans of the trouble of ever having to sleep again. Three interns from a college, a male and two females, come to help out (and to add to the body count). In this take on the slasher genre, the slasher is a blue-haired narcoleptic punk chick who hasn't slept in 16 days…and is equipped with a drill.

Honestly, this movie, shot directly to video, is not worth the unintentional laughs. It clocks in at 75 minutes—and 15 of those are used for opening and closing credits to exploit the musical score, which would have been better saved for a good movie. There are actually a few good performances, and it bewilders me how the good actors were able to act so well when working off the other really bad actors. There's no gore other than a liver bought at a grocery store and painted red, and considered a special effect. All drill moments are cut away from and followed by a blink of red light across the screen. When a gun is shot, there's a very comic book graphic blast used on screen. I was almost waiting to see "Bang!" splashed across with it. There is NO creative camera work—the camera always shoots head-on at the actors. It really looks like friends got together with a camcorder and were just goofing off. In terms of dialogue, there's a lot of focus on anal stuff—talk of suppositories, doggy style anal sex, and even a chick who sits on top of a guy with a cucumber stuffed down her pants, which freaks him out and sends him running (so maybe remmer had a subliminal meaning after all). Then there's a classic moment where Addie decides the only way to wake up her unconscious boyfriend as the killer drills down the door is to—well, maybe finding out will be motivation enough for you to watch this.

The DVD

Video:
The film is in full-frame, 1:33:1 aspect ratio. It's pixilated, blurry most often during close-ups, with some sharpness and clarity on distance shots. The amateurish lighting creates a very washed out image.

Sound:
5.1 surround is promised. It's dull mono pumped through 5 channels.

Extras:
No extras whatsoever. You get chapter select, with 8 breaks. Also, don't be fooled by the DVD case, which shows stills from the movie that have apparently been treated so they look like the movie was shot on film, not video.

Final Thoughts:
Remmer doesn't work as a horror movie, it doesn't work as a horror comedy, and it never pushes the envelope enough to be schlock. It's just a good way to promote narcolepsy…literally.

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